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The ''Bhadracaryāpraṇidhānarājaṭīkā'' (An Extensive Commentary on "The King of Aspiration Prayers: Samantabhadra's 'Aspiration to Good Actions'") was composed by the great master Rgyan bzang po and translated by the Indian Upādhyāya Jñānagarbha and the great translator Kawa Paltsek. The text systematically explains ten main sections of Samantabhadra's famous prayer: homage to the Buddhas, making offerings, confessing negative deeds, rejoicing in merit, requesting teachings, asking the Buddhas to remain, and dedicating merit toward enlightenment. The commentary then breaks down the prayer's structure into sixteen detailed aspects, including maintaining bodhicitta (the awakening mind), practicing without attachment, benefiting beings, meeting spiritual friends, and cultivating various powers and qualities. Throughout, it emphasizes that by reciting and practicing this aspiration, practitioners can purify even the gravest karmic obscurations, accumulate immense merit, see the Buddha Amitābha, and ultimately attain complete enlightenment—with benefits that only a Buddha can fully comprehend. The text concludes by dedicating all merit to the welfare of beings for as long as existence endures. +
This commentary on Samantabhadra's "Aspiration to Good Actions" was composed by the master Śākyamitra and translated by the Indian master Śākyasiṃha and the great reviser and translator Kawa Paltsek. The text provides a structural outline dividing the aspiration prayer into distinct stages: the bodhisattva's practice based on faith and the pure intention on the ''bhūmi''s (spiritual stages). It systematically maps specific verses to the ten bodhisattva stages, explaining practices such as prostrations, offerings, confession, rejoicing in merit, and dedicating virtue to enlightenment. The commentary details how practitioners progress from initial aspiration through increasingly refined levels of realization—including seeing Buddha-fields, engaging with the Buddha's speech, turning the Dharma wheel, and cultivating ten powers—culminating in the attainment of buddhahood. It emphasizes both the meditative benefits in this life (accumulating merit, seeing Amitābha Buddha, purifying karmic obscurations) and future lives (wisdom, excellent signs, swift enlightenment), concluding that merely reciting this prayer generates immeasurable merit that leads beings across the ocean of suffering to the pure land of Sukhāvatī. +
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This is a commentary on Samantabhadra's "Aspiration to Good Actions" composed by Ācārya Vasubandhu and translated by the Indian Upādhyāya Paṇḍita Ācārya Ānanda and the lotsāwa Bhadrapāla. The text systematically presents the aspiration prayer's "concise meaning" through ten main points: homage to the Tathāgatas, making offerings, confessing misdeeds, rejoicing in merit, requesting the Dharma wheel be turned, imploring Buddhas not to pass into nirvāṇa, dedicating roots of virtue, explaining its subdivisions, discussing its finality, and understanding its benefits. Vasubandhu then elaborates these into sixteen detailed aspects covering the bodhisattva path, including generating bodhicitta, maintaining it without forgetting, practicing without defilement, benefiting beings, donning the armor of practice, meeting spiritual companions, seeing Buddhas directly, upholding the sacred Dharma, and cultivating various powers and antidotes. The commentary emphasizes both present-life benefits (accumulating extraordinary merit, seeing Amitābha Buddha, purifying karmic obscurations) and future-life benefits (wisdom, excellent marks, swift enlightenment), concluding that this aspiration prayer leads practitioners to the pure land of Sukhāvatī and ultimately to perfect buddhahood. +
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Explores Bhadracaryā in the ŚS, paying attention to the meanings of Bhadracaryā in the ''Bhadracaryāpraṇidhānarāja'' and in Dignāga's commentary and the treatments of it in the ŚS. +
''Bhadrakalpikasūtra''. (T. Bskal pa bzang po'i mdo/Mdo sde bskal bzang; C. Xianjie jing; J. Gengōgyō; K. Hyǒn'gǒp kyǒng 賢劫經). In Sanskrit, "Auspicious Eon Scripture"; a Mahāyāna text in twenty-four chapters, written c. 200-250 CE and translated into Chinese by Dharmarakṣa in either 291 or 300 CE. In this scripture, the Buddha teaches a special concentration (''samādhi'') through the mastery of which bodhisattvas come to be equipped with 2,100 perfections (''pāramitā''), 84,000 samādhis and 84,000 codes (''dhāraṇī''). He then lists the names of a thousand buddhas who will appear during the "auspicious eon" (''bhadrakalpa'') due to the merit they obtained from practicing this samādhi, as well as their residences, parents, disciples, spiritual powers, teachings, and so on. In the Tibetan bka' 'gyur the ''Bhadrakalpikasūtra'' takes pride of place as the first in the sūtra section (''mdo sde''); it is recited often, and it is not uncommon for the elaborate hagiographies (''rnam thar'') of important Tibetan religious figures or incarnations (''sprul sku'') to identify their subject as an earlier rebirth of one of the thousand buddhas. (Source: "Bhadrakalpikasūtra." In ''The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism'', 106. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.) +
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''Śūraṃgamasūtra''. (T. Dpa' bar 'gro ba'i mdo; C. Shoulengyan jing; J. Shuryōgongyō; K. Sunǔngǒm kyǒng 首楞嚴經). A Chinese indigenous scripture (see apocrypha), usually known in the West by its reconstructed Sanskrit title ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'', meaning "Heroic March Sūtra." Its full title is ''Dafoding rulai miyin xiuzheng liaoyi zhu pusa wanxing Shoulengyan jing'', in ten rolls. (This indigenous scripture should be distinguished from an early-fifth century Chinese translation of the ''Śūraṃgamasamādhsūtra'', attributed by Kumārajīva, in two rolls, for which Sanskrit fragments are extant.) According to the account in the Chinese cataloguer Zhisheng's ''Xu gujin yijing tuji'', the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' was brought to China by a śramaṇa named Pāramiti. Because the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' had been proclaimed a national treasure, the Indian king had forbidden anyone to take the sūtra out of the country. In order to transmit this scripture to China, Pāramiti wrote the sūtra out in minute letters on extremely fine silk, then he cut open his arm and hid the small scroll inside his flesh. With the sūtra safely hidden away, Pāramiti set out for China and eventually arrived in Guangdong province. There, he happened to meet the exiled Prime Minister Fangrong, who invited him to reside at the monastery of Zhizhisi, where he translated the sūtra in 705 CE. Apart from Pāramiti's putative connection to the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'', however, nothing more is known about him and he has no biography in the Gaoseng zhuan ("Biographies of Eminent Monks"). Zhisheng also has an entry on the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' in his ''Kaiyuan Shijiao lu'', but there are contradictions in these two extant catalogue accounts of the sūtra's transmission and translation. The ''Kaiyuan Shijiao lu'' merely records that the śramaņa Huidi encountered an unnamed Western monk at Guangdong, who had with him a copy of the Sanskrit recension of this sūtra, and Huidi invited him to translate the scripture together. Since the names of this Western monk and his patron Fangrong are not mentioned, the authenticity of the scripture has been called into question. Although Zhisheng assumed the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' was a genuine Indian scripture, the fact that no Sanskrit manuscript of the text is known to exist, as well as the inconsistencies in the stories about its transmission to China, have led scholiasts for centuries to questions the scripture's authenticity. There is also internal evidence of the scripture's Chinese provenance, such as the presence of such indigenous Chinese philosophical concepts as yin-yang cosmology and the five elements (wuxing) theory, the stylistic beauty of the literary Chinese in which the text is written, etc. For these and other reasons, the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' is now generally recognized to be a Chinese apocryphal composition. The sūtra opens with one of the most celebrated stories in East Asian Buddhist literature: the Buddha's attendant Ānanda’s near seduction by the harlot Mātaṅgī. With Ānanda close to being in flagrante delicto, the Buddha sends the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī to save him from a pārājika offense, by employing the śūraṃgama dhāraṇī to thwart Mātaṅgī's seductive magic. The Buddha uses the experience to teach to Ānanda and the congregation the śūraṃgamasamādhi, which counters the false views about the aggregates (skandha) and consciousness (vijñāna) and reveals the tathāgatagarbha that is inherent in all sentient beings. This tathāgatagarbha, or buddha-nature, is made manifest through the śūraṃgamasamādhi, which constitutes the "heroic march" forward toward enlightenment. The ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' was especially influential in the Chan school during the Song and Ming dynasties, which used the text as the scriptural justification for the school's distinctive teaching that Chan "points directly to the human mind" (zhizhi renxin), so that one may "see the nature and achieve buddhahood" (jianxing chengfo). Several noted figures within the Chan school achieved their own awakenings through the influence of the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'', including the Ming-dynasty master Hanshan Deqing (1546–1623), and the sūtra was particularly important in the writings of such Ming-dynasty Chan masters as Yunqi Zhuhong (1535-1615). The leading Chan monk of modern Chinese Buddhism, Xuyun (1840-1959), advocated the practice of the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' throughout his life, and it was the only scripture that he ever annotated. As a mark of the sūtra's influence in East Asian Buddhism, the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' is one of the few apocryphal scriptures that receives its own mention in another indigenous sūtra: the apocryphal ''Foshuo fa miejin jing'' ("The Sūtra on the Extinction of the Dharma") states that the first sūtra to disappear from the world during the dharma-ending age (mofa) will in fact be the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra''. The Tibetan translation of this Chinese apocryphon was produced during the Qianlong era (1735-1796) of the Qing dynasty; the scripture was apparently so important in contemporary Chinese Buddhism that it was deemed essential for it to be represented in the Tibetan canon as well. (Source: "*Śūraṃgamasūtra." In ''The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism'', 873–74. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
''Śūraṃgamasūtra''. (T. Dpa' bar 'gro ba'i mdo; C. Shoulengyan jing; J. Shuryōgongyō; K. Sunǔngǒm kyǒng 首楞嚴經). A Chinese indigenous scripture (see apocrypha), usually known in the West by its reconstructed Sanskrit title ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'', meaning "Heroic March Sūtra." Its full title is ''Dafoding rulai miyin xiuzheng liaoyi zhu pusa wanxing Shoulengyan jing'', in ten rolls. (This indigenous scripture should be distinguished from an early-fifth century Chinese translation of the ''Śūraṃgamasamādhsūtra'', attributed by Kumārajīva, in two rolls, for which Sanskrit fragments are extant.) According to the account in the Chinese cataloguer Zhisheng's ''Xu gujin yijing tuji'', the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' was brought to China by a śramaṇa named Pāramiti. Because the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' had been proclaimed a national treasure, the Indian king had forbidden anyone to take the sūtra out of the country. In order to transmit this scripture to China, Pāramiti wrote the sūtra out in minute letters on extremely fine silk, then he cut open his arm and hid the small scroll inside his flesh. With the sūtra safely hidden away, Pāramiti set out for China and eventually arrived in Guangdong province. There, he happened to meet the exiled Prime Minister Fangrong, who invited him to reside at the monastery of Zhizhisi, where he translated the sūtra in 705 CE. Apart from Pāramiti's putative connection to the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'', however, nothing more is known about him and he has no biography in the Gaoseng zhuan ("Biographies of Eminent Monks"). Zhisheng also has an entry on the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' in his ''Kaiyuan Shijiao lu'', but there are contradictions in these two extant catalogue accounts of the sūtra's transmission and translation. The ''Kaiyuan Shijiao lu'' merely records that the śramaņa Huidi encountered an unnamed Western monk at Guangdong, who had with him a copy of the Sanskrit recension of this sūtra, and Huidi invited him to translate the scripture together. Since the names of this Western monk and his patron Fangrong are not mentioned, the authenticity of the scripture has been called into question. Although Zhisheng assumed the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' was a genuine Indian scripture, the fact that no Sanskrit manuscript of the text is known to exist, as well as the inconsistencies in the stories about its transmission to China, have led scholiasts for centuries to questions the scripture's authenticity. There is also internal evidence of the scripture's Chinese provenance, such as the presence of such indigenous Chinese philosophical concepts as yin-yang cosmology and the five elements (wuxing) theory, the stylistic beauty of the literary Chinese in which the text is written, etc. For these and other reasons, the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' is now generally recognized to be a Chinese apocryphal composition. The sūtra opens with one of the most celebrated stories in East Asian Buddhist literature: the Buddha's attendant Ānanda’s near seduction by the harlot Mātaṅgī. With Ānanda close to being in flagrante delicto, the Buddha sends the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī to save him from a pārājika offense, by employing the śūraṃgama dhāraṇī to thwart Mātaṅgī's seductive magic. The Buddha uses the experience to teach to Ānanda and the congregation the śūraṃgamasamādhi, which counters the false views about the aggregates (skandha) and consciousness (vijñāna) and reveals the tathāgatagarbha that is inherent in all sentient beings. This tathāgatagarbha, or buddha-nature, is made manifest through the śūraṃgamasamādhi, which constitutes the "heroic march" forward toward enlightenment. The ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' was especially influential in the Chan school during the Song and Ming dynasties, which used the text as the scriptural justification for the school's distinctive teaching that Chan "points directly to the human mind" (zhizhi renxin), so that one may "see the nature and achieve buddhahood" (jianxing chengfo). Several noted figures within the Chan school achieved their own awakenings through the influence of the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'', including the Ming-dynasty master Hanshan Deqing (1546–1623), and the sūtra was particularly important in the writings of such Ming-dynasty Chan masters as Yunqi Zhuhong (1535-1615). The leading Chan monk of modern Chinese Buddhism, Xuyun (1840-1959), advocated the practice of the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' throughout his life, and it was the only scripture that he ever annotated. As a mark of the sūtra's influence in East Asian Buddhism, the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra'' is one of the few apocryphal scriptures that receives its own mention in another indigenous sūtra: the apocryphal ''Foshuo fa miejin jing'' ("The Sūtra on the Extinction of the Dharma") states that the first sūtra to disappear from the world during the dharma-ending age (mofa) will in fact be the ''Śūraṃgamasūtra''. The Tibetan translation of this Chinese apocryphon was produced during the Qianlong era (1735-1796) of the Qing dynasty; the scripture was apparently so important in contemporary Chinese Buddhism that it was deemed essential for it to be represented in the Tibetan canon as well. (Source: "*Śūraṃgamasūtra." In ''The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism'', 873–74. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
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''The Detailed Account of the Previous Aspirations of the Blessed Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabha'' centers on the figure commonly known as the Medicine Buddha. The text opens in Vaiśālī, where the Buddha Śākyamuni is seated with a large retinue of human and divine beings. The bodhisattva Mañjuśrī asks Śākyamuni to teach the names and previous aspirations of the buddhas, along with the benefit that buddhas can bring during future times when the Dharma has nearly disappeared. The Buddha gives a teaching on the name and previous aspirations of the Buddha Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabha, and then details the benefits that arise from hearing and retaining this buddha's name. (Source: [https://read.84000.co/translation/toh504.html 84000]) +
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''The Detailed Account of the Previous Aspirations of the Blessed Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabha'' centers on the figure commonly known as the Medicine Buddha. The text opens in Vaiśālī, where the Buddha Śākyamuni is seated with a large retinue of human and divine beings. The bodhisattva Mañjuśrī asks Śākyamuni to teach the names and previous aspirations of the buddhas, along with the benefit that buddhas can bring during future times when the Dharma has nearly disappeared. The Buddha gives a teaching on the name and previous aspirations of the Buddha Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabha, and then details the benefits that arise from hearing and retaining this buddha's name. (Source: [https://read.84000.co/translation/toh504.html 84000]) +
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The ''Bhagavatyāmnāyānusāriṇīnāmavyākhyā'' (Tib. ''Bcom ldan 'das ma'i man ngag gi rjes su 'brang ba zhes bya ba'i rnam par bshad pa'') is a detailed commentary (''rnam par bshad pa'') on the ''Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra'', composed by Jagaddalanivāsin (Tib. Dza gat+ta tA lar gnas pa) and translated into Tibetan by the paṇḍita Alaṅkadeva together with the Tibetan translator Tengpa Lotsāwa Tsultrim Jungne (Tib. Bod kyi lo tsā ba dge slong tshul khrims 'byung gnas). Its full colophon title reads ''Bcom ldan 'das ma 'phags pa shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa brgyad stong pa'i rnam par bshad pa man ngag gi rjes su 'brang ba zhes bya ba''. It is classified within the Prajñāpāramitā commentarial section (mdo 'grel, sher phyin) of the Tengyur, corresponding to Toh. no. 3811, and survives in multiple recensions. +
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